ipl: Women’s IPL: It’s been a long run-up to the crease, ladies

It has finally happened. After three years of experimentation, with three teams playing a short five match set, the BCCI has finally announced a full-fledged women’s IPL. In fact, ‘full’ can be a bit of a stretch. The inaugural men’s tournament featured 8 franchises playing a total of 59 matches. In the first year, the women’s tournament will feature 5 franchises. And, given that league stages are usually played in a round-robin format, there is no point in qualifying 4 out of 5 teams. If the third- and fourth-placed teams also play-off against each other, it will most likely be a 21- or 22-match format.

While this has generally been welcomed as a step forward, two issues are being debated:

Why did it take so long to start a women’s league, given that the IPL was the first T20 league and literally established a pro-cricket format in 2008?

Why 5 teams, where even a basic dipstick indicates there is enough interest for teams to have at least 8, if not 10 competing franchises?

The first can probably be attributed to a few factors. Anyone who has followed the IPL for the past few years will only look at the impressive numbers and relatively stable franchises. But the first 6-7 years of the IPL, while wildly successful, were tumultuous. He left the country in 2009 to avoid the general election. Lalit Modi was ousted in 2010. Kochi was annexed, Pune was taken back. The ban list on CSK and Rajasthan goes on and on.

No one in the BCCI or the IPL had given any thought beyond the existence of the men’s tournament Golden Goose. When things calmed down, expanding the men’s league was a more attractive priority. And it was easier to organize a token 5-match tournament than the hassle of auctioning off franchises and setting up a proper calendar and league for women.

The second contentious issue stemmed from the fact that the pool of quality women players was always a concern for administrators. In conversations in 2012, a senior BCCI selector told me that there were around 15-20 women players of professional quality and that the standards dropped sharply after the top 20. Given that each team would need at least 10 quality Indian players with 5. For international players, it would require at least 50 decent Indian players to harmonize the standards.

And that was, perhaps, the scale of seeing 5 franchises in the first year working backwards from the perceived quality pool.

There are many detractors of the argument, some claiming it was a chicken and egg situation. The faster the league starts, the more women players will be inspired and they will get a platform to step up their game. Others claim that these pool numbers were wildly subjective. In any event, the women’s IPL is trying to ensure a certain quality, by allowing 5 foreigners per team, as opposed to 4 in the IPL.

How big can this league be? Impressive national team performances and far greater awareness have meant that top women’s players today are well known and followed, a far cry from the horrific years of the 1990s, when women played a total of 26 ODIs throughout the decade. While the men’s teams were playing 40 matches a year. And right now, given the interest in teams, the men’s tournament won’t even have to subsidize the event to ensure a fair deal for the players.

Women’s professional sport has come a long way. Golf, and then tennis from the 1970s and Billie Jean King, were at the fore in the action. But over the past two decades, women’s Premier League football in England, where top players can earn up to £400,000 (₹3.68 crore), and WNBA basketball in the US, have shown that the top-level women’s team sport is here to stay.

BCCI has taken its time. But if they get that right, this league could be one of the most empowering moments for the women’s game in India.

Originally published at Pen 18